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Musket
A musket is a muzzle-loading, smoothbore personal arm fired from the shoulder. It is the common arm employed by both sides during the Peninsular War and at sea by the Royal Marines. The musket employed at this period by the British is the Brown Bess, with different variants employed by soldiers, marines and cavalry. Speed and Accuracy The rate of fire depends very much on the skill of the individual musketeer. A trained soldier or marine was expected to be able to fire three rounds a minute and exceptional men could fire four. Because of the lack of rifling grooves in the barrel, (which would otherwise spin the ball and impart greater accuracy) the musket was an inaccurate weapon and so soldiers were trained to fire massed volleys at the enemy rather than trying to pick off individual targets. Parts of a musket The phrase 'lock, stock and barrel' has come into everyday parlance to refer to the parts that make up the whole, and refers to the three main parts of a musket: the lock (the firing mechanism), the stock (the wooden base that holds it together and the barrel is the tube used to contain and propel the ball. The Brown Bess musket is designed to be fitted with a bayonet , the socket of which fits around the muzzle, permitting the weapon to be fired with the bayonet fitted. Fixing a bayonet turns the musket into a short pike, which could then be deployed as a secondary weapon once the musket had been fired. Approximately a third of all battlefield casualties were the result of bayonet wounds rather than musket fire. The stock was made from wood. British muskets were generally made of walnut which is tough and durable. The base of the stock is called the butt, and the stock was sturdy enough that the butt (which was bound in brass) could be used as a blunt force weapon in hand-to-hand combat. The lock had a hammer which could be pulled back, or cocked, to permit the weapon to be primed, and then released by pulling the trigger. The hammer was often referred to as a dogshead or a cock due to the fact that it looked somewhat like a dog or chicken's head when viewed from the side. Flintlocks and percussion locks typically had a "half cocked" position, which was a theoretical "safe" position from which the weapon could be loaded but not fired. Only when the hammer was pulled back into the "full cocked" position could it be fired. The phrase "don't go off half cocked" has its origins in this type of weapon. The barrel was smoothbore. While rifled weapons were manufactured at this date (and the first rifle troops entered the British army in 1797), the rifling was quickly fouled by the black powder or gunpowder which was the propellant used at the time. The front of the barrel is called the muzzle and the rear end is the breech. Any weapon, such a musket, where powder and ball were loaded via the muzzle is termed muzzle-loading. A ramrod, stored in brass pipes in a groove under the stock, was used to push the powder, ball and wadding down the barrel to the breech end. men who used muzzle-loading weapons were trained to replace their ramrods as part of the loading procedure, so that they did not accidentally fire the ramrods at the enemy, or leave them behind if they were suddenly required to advance or retreat. Some muskets, such as the French Charleville musket, used bands to attach the barrel to the stock. British Brown Bess muskets were attached by pins running through the stock to lugs cast on the underside of the barrel, of one piece with the barrel. Smoothbore muskets were not equipped with sights; although the bayonet lug could be used as a rudimentary sight, it could not be employed in this way with the bayonet fitted. Ammunition The simplicity of the musket allowed various things to be used as ammunition, although the standard was a solid lead ball weighing about an ounce. Cartridges were made by rolling a shaped piece of paper around a 'former' the diameter of the musket ball, and tucking one end in. Then the ball was placed inside the tube and the powder added on top before the cartridges were folded or tied closed. Loading and Firing There were several steps necessary in order to load and fire a musket correctly and safely. # The lock was put to the half-cock position, with the frizzen forward # The cartridge was removed from the pouch (which was immediately fastened closed) # The soldier bit the end of the cartridge off and poured enough powder into the pan to cover it, then shut the pan # The musket was cast about so that the butt rested on the ground outside the man's left foot with the barrel facing to his front # The rest of the powder was poured down the barrel, followed by the ball with the empty tube squeezed closed around it to act as wadding. # The ramrod was withdrawn and the ball, powder and wadding rammed down # The ramrod was returned to its place under the barrel # The musket was brought up vertically in front of the soldier, who cocked it by pulling the cock fully to the rear # The musket was brought down into the 'present' position and the soldier pulled the trigger. A trained soldier could expect to be able to fire three rounds in one minute and expert soldiers could manage four. Flintlock animated firing sequence Category:Background Information